January 23rd, 2020. Overnight the Chinese city of Wuhan is locked down. Before long, the entire Greater China region followed suit, causing millions of job losses and many companies - especially traditional, non-digital businesses, to close.

For job-seekers, 2020 was going to become their toughest year yet. Thousands of college graduates felt lost without the prospect of employment.

At the same time, many businesses were struggling with a lack of digital talent, as they found themselves suddenly forced to conduct business online due to social-distancing measures.

As a key industry partner across Greater China, Google wanted to help alleviate the crisis by helping to digitally upskill and get workers and fresh graduates into work, providing suffering businesses with the digital skills they need.

January 23rd, 2020: Overnight the Chinese city of Wuhan was locked down. Before long, the entire Greater China region followed suit, causing millions of job losses and many companies - especially traditional, non-digital businesses, to close.

For job-seekers, 2020 was going to become their toughest year yet. Thousands of college graduates and recently unemployed patrons felt lost without the prospect of employment.

At the same time, many businesses were struggling with a lack of digital talent, as they found themselves suddenly forced to conduct business online due to social-distancing measures.

Google launched Project Kepler – a digital transformation and recovery initiative across Greater China. The idea was simple: Google wanted to play its societal role by filling the gap between the industry’s need for digital solutions and the talent available by helping get as many people back into work as possible by equipping talent with knowledge and skills of Google’s digital products.

Google offered free digital training courses via ‘Grow with Google’, allowing job seekers to up-skill themselves while becoming familiar with Google Ads products – ideal for businesses looking to as well as digitally transform themselves out of the crisis. To further supplement this, Google organized Fast Pass Trainings, a monthly livestream training session with tailor-made advanced training content for young talent.

The team in Mainland China partnered with NetEase Youdao and educational content platform, Zhihu, to create more immersive learning content. On NetEase Youdao, Google launched a brand-new tailor-made Google Ads course specific to Mainland China, focusing specifically on export digital. On Zhihu, Google created a special topic on the ‘Importance of Export Digital Marketing’.

Those who completed the course became certified and were promoted by Google as top tier digital talent, helping them to land work quicker while helping businesses to transform.

To promote the top-tier talent, Google partnered with 智联招聘, one of Mainland China’s leading recruitment sites, and 104 Job Bank, the biggest job bank in Taiwan. On these platforms, Google created a ‘Google Digital Talent’ section that specifically promoted these certified job seekers for businesses looking to digitalise, while helping struggling businesses looking to transform quickly identify the digitally-equipped talent they so desperately needed.

During a critical time for both businesses and job-seekers, the project brought huge relief and was massively successful.

In Mainland China, over 30,000 job-seekers signed up for Google’ training. From these sign-ups, more than 11,000 job-seekers taking part in the courses. Over 110 companies signed up, allowing Google to place over 700 certified graduates into jobs during a recession and pandemic.

In Taiwan, over 10,000 job-seekers signed up for the program, of which more than 800 participants passed the courses, filling 124 jobs across 43 companies, despite many businesses cutting jobs.

Thanks to Project Kepler, Google was able to support both talent and businesses during a time of a crisis - transforming the industry to recover stronger than before.